Revenue growing from ads on PISD buses

So, have you noticed the paid advertising on school buses in the Pearland Independent School District?

Well, in this first month into the school year, the program has generated more than 62 percent of what the the district made in all of last year, said Michael Beauchamp of Alpha Media School Bus Advertising, Pearland ISD’s advertising partner.

Last year, Pearland ISD’s school bus advertising program generated $8,000 for ads that ran on 36 of the district’s 117-bus fleet, said Raul Cruz, the district’s transportation director.

“We started the program last September right before Hurricane Ike hit, and after that everything, including the economy declined,” Cruz said.

Currently, the district has ads running on approximately 70 buses resulting in $5,000 in revenue for September, Cruz said. The ads typically are placed on the buses that run on regular route buses that travel throughout the entire district, he added.

School officials and Alpha Media work together to ensure the school bus ads do not display inappropriate content, Cruz said.

“We will not allow anything that would take away from our schools,” Cruz said.

The ads are available in two sizes and can be placed in two different areas of the bus.

Do you think public school buses are an appropriate place to run advertisements?

6 Responses

I’m for it. Any extra money the district can make without increasing taxes is a good thing. There’s obviously a line that should be drawn on what’s advertised, but from what I’ve seen, PISD has done a good job with it.

I think it’s pretty sad that the school district thinks this is a good way to raise money. I think the busses look trashy with ads stuck on them. Isn’t our culture already oversaturated with advertisements? This sends the wrong message to kids. And who decides what constitutes “good taste” in ads? PISD is asking for a lawsuit from any potential advertiser who gets turned down because their ad doesn’t fit PISD’s idea of a “decent” advertisement.

Looking at the amount of money being raised by this, I have a better idea – how about eliminating an educrat’s position in the PISD administration? That might save the district $75K a year, which is a lot more than these ads are bringing in.

Gimmicks like sticking ads on busses to fill holes in the budget are just that, gimmicks, and gimmicks aren’t proper financial management. If PISD didn’t waste money I bet they wouldn’t have a budget deficit now. One example of wasteful spending by PISD is the football stadium. Remember back when The Rig, the new Pearland High School football stadium was built we (the taxpayers) were told that the stadium would have grass turf, instead of an artificial playing surface? We were told that a natural turf field was better for the football players, as injuries were fewer in number, and when injuries did occur they were less severe on grass. So the money was spent to install grass and for several years lots of money apparently was spent to maintain it.

Then, time for the next school bond election and we (the taxpayers) were told that the stadium needed an artificial playing surface installed because it was just costing too much money to keep that doggone grass alive. I don’t know the exact dollar figures for the cost of the original natural turf playing field, the cost of the yearly maintenance to keep the grass alive before the district “threw in the towel” so to speak, and the cost to install the artificial playing surface that the stadium has now, but I’m sure we’re talking a few hundred thousand dollars here. Apparently no one at PISD thought about the high costs involved to properly maintain a grass football field and so when that expense took a big bite out of their yearly budget it must have been decided to rip it all out (by the roots of course) and to install an artificial surface.

The point is, our school district has been known to waste OUR money. We need more accountability from the school board on exactly how tax dollars are spent, especially on district administration. And we shouldn’t have to attend school board meetings to discover this information either; post it on the PISD Web site. And we the taxpayers need to hold the school board accountable when money is wasted.

If you look at this one single web page you will see some 24 people whose salaries would average over 100K a year each. http://www.pearlandisd.org/information.cfm?subpage=971 This also doesn’t include the many assistant directors and coordinators that are in many of these departments. Those would include over 15 more people who would make at least 75K.

What happen to actually having teachers in a school district? Aren’t they the ones who do the “work”?

I think it’s time for the “ONE” who got us into this mess to go somewhere else – Bonny? (we can work on our sad excuse for the board later-you know, all those people who believed everything “she” told them)